Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online Comparison

Both Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online are cloud-based accounting software that cater to a variety of industries. They have robust feature sets with hundreds of integrations to streamline your business processes. While QuickBooks is the better choice for businesses wanting to send estimates to customers and track activity by class and location, Sage Intacct is great for businesses with multiple entities and nonprofits as it has an interactive dashboard and advanced capabilities, such as fund accounting.

Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online at a Glance

When To Use Each

When To Use an Alternative

If your business doesn’t meet a scenario wherein Sage Intacct or QuickBooks Online can serve your need, we suggest the following alternatives:

• Businesses seeking free accounting software: Both Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online lack a free plan. If you’re on a budget and want a free option, consider Sunrise, which we selected as the best overall free accounting software.
• Businesses that want desktop accounting software: While QuickBooks Online and Sage Intacct are cloud-based, QuickBooks Desktop is installed locally and, therefore, works even when you don’t have an internet connection.
• Individuals with rental property: Neither QuickBooks Online nor Sage Intacct allow you to manage and track tenants. The Quicken Home & Business edition is a great option for individuals who own rental property because of its ability to collect rent payments online and help you manage your personal finances. It’s one of our leading alternatives to QuickBooks.

See our guide to the top small business accounting software if you require other alternatives.

Sage Intacct Pricing vs QuickBooks Online Pricing

It’s difficult to compare software pricing because Sage Intacct and QuickBooks are so different in their approach. QuickBooks Online offers five subscription plans, which range in price from $15 to $200 per month and are based on the number of users and available features. To learn more about its different plans, check out our QuickBooks Online comparison.

Meanwhile, unlike many other accounting platforms that are priced on a standard monthly or annual subscription basis, Sage Intacct’s pricing is quote-based. This means there’s no standard Sage Intacct cost, and instead, pricing is customized based on your business.

Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks: Features

We selected QuickBooks Online as the best small business accounting software—and for good reasons, such as the ability to send estimates and perform job costing. It also has strong reporting and inventory tracking capabilities and more than 650 integrations. Additionally, it offers integrated payroll and time tracking, which is great for businesses not wanting to use a third-party integration service.

It excels with its strong customization features, which allow you to brand your forms and customize categories. For businesses with employees, you can generate W-2 forms if you integrate them with QuickBooks Payroll. However, QuickBooks cannot convert currency within reports, defer billing, and handle order management or processing.

Meanwhile, Sage Intaccct has six overarching modules, and you can select the ones you need as part of your plan. These include core financials, dashboards, integrations, reporting, billing, budgeting and planning, and advanced functionality for an additional cost.

The platform makes it simple to create real-time dashboards across one or more entities without the need to export them to Excel. Dashboards can combine both financial and operational data and, with its built-in dimensions, you can analyze your data, drilling down to source transactions.

For all of Sage Intacct’s benefits, it cannot send estimates to customers, sales orders to vendors, and track time and mileage. However, it does have strong collaboration tools and an ability to view customer history and handle multiple entities, which are features that QuickBooks Online lacks.

Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online: Ease of Use

QuickBooks Online is very user-friendly, with a dashboard that allows access to many key features, such as your account balances, income and expense totals, and comprehensive charts. There’s also a navigation bar on the left that will take you to each section:

QuickBooks Online Dashboard

1. Left navigation bar: This section has shortcuts to different aspects of your business, including Transactions, Expenses, Sales, Cash Flow, Projects, Payroll, Reports, Taxes, Mileage, Accounting, My Accountant, Capital, Apps, and Live Bookkeeping. Payroll and Live Bookkeeping are add-on services for an additional fee.
2. Cash Flow: Customizable by time period, this report shows you your income, cost of goods sold, and expenses.
3. Income: All income-related items, such as paid invoices, are shown here. This information allows you to follow up on overdue invoices and view your A/R report.
4. Expenses: Your expenses, broken down by category, are shown here.
5. Profit and Loss: Your profit and loss (P&L) statement can be generated here.
6. Sales: View a customizable graph of sales generated during a specified time period.
7. Bank Accounts: Connect your bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Online, and you will be able to access both your bank and QuickBooks balances.

Compared to QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct’s user interface isn’t that user-friendly and can be overwhelming for beginners. Its advanced user interface is called Action UI, and it offers tools for A/P, bank reconciliations, and creating custom reports:

Sage Intacct’s CFO Dashboard (Source: Sage Intacct)

Shown above is a CFO dashboard, which has reports that are unique to the business. This includes quarterly revenue by channel, 3-year revenue trend, revenue by segment trend, weekly cash balances, and salary and wages by department. This allows the CFO to obtain a comprehensive glimpse at the different aspects of the business:

Documented correspondence (Source: Sage Intacct)

There’s also a front-to-back office compliance tool, which allows you to collaborate on decisions and document them in the context of the financial documents they relate to. In the future, you can replace recollections and speculation with a documented decision and audit trail.

Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online: Assisted Bookkeeping

QuickBooks Online offers assisted bookkeeping in the form of QuickBooks Live, which assigns you to a virtual bookkeeper. Its services include monthly reports that allow you to monitor the financial health of your business. Your bookkeeper will first bring your books up-to-date and then work with you to tackle your ongoing work. However, this doesn’t include day-to-day bookkeeping tasks like paying bills, invoicing, A/P, and accounts receivable (A/R)—but it does allow for both cash and accrual accounting.

If your issue is a bit more complex, you might want to consider consulting with someone from Intuit’s expansive network of QuickBooks Pro Advisors.

Meanwhile, Sage Intacct doesn’t have a dedicated bookkeeping service available, but we recommend that you take advantage of its partnership with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and CPA.com to select from the best outsourced financial pros for your business.

Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online: Integrations

Sage Intacct offers the ability to connect to all applications you have, whether they’re proprietary custom applications or widely used business systems like Salesforce CRM. You can do this by accessing prebuilt connections that are available through the Sage Intacct Marketplace.

QuickBooks Online, on the other hand, currently integrates with more than 650 popular business apps, including two that can be accessed directly within the platform.

• QuickBooks Payroll: Full payroll functionality is available by clicking on QuickBooks Payroll. This includes integrated payroll, taxes, human resources, health benefits, and workers’ compensation.
• QuickBooks Time: Track time with the mobile app and then bill customers or use it for payroll within QuickBooks Online. Among Time’s advanced features are GPS tracking of employees and time clock terminals with facial recognition.

Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks Online: Mobile App

Available for both Android and iOS devices, the QuickBooks mobile app gives you an overview of your business activity and allows you to accomplish multiple accounting tasks wherever you are. You can view dashboard data, create and send invoices, accept payments, capture receipts and attach them to expenses, reconcile transactions, view customer information, and message customers from the app. You can also track your mileage using GPS, which you can categorize as business or personal.

Other than accessing Sage Intacct through the web browser, it doesn’t have a mobile app. However, it does have a mobile-friendly browser interface so you can still access it when you’re on the go.

Sage Intacct vs QuickBooks: Customer Support

Both Sage Intacct and QuickBooks Online offer a variety of ways to receive support. QuickBooks offers:

• Telephone support: While phone support is available, it isn’t possible to call QuickBooks Online directly. You must submit a request for them to call you.
• Email support: Email is an option if your issue is less time sensitive.
• Live chat support: If you’re unable to find what you’re looking for, you can contact the support team by clicking on the “Contact us” button at the bottom of the help window. However, this is unavailable 24/7.
• Searchable knowledge base: This includes help pages, videos, webinars, and paid courses.
• User community: Post a question in the community forum and receive feedback from other users who may be able to help you troubleshoot the issue.

Sage Intacct, meanwhile, has a Help Center, which covers how to use its features and functions. You can also visit Sage Intacct Community, which is available 24/7 and allows you to submit a support case, keep tabs on the status of your open cases, and visit the knowledge base for articles on common issues and troubleshooting solutions.

It also offers premium support plans at four levels: Essentials, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. These give you unlimited access to phone support and enable you to obtain answers related to product features quickly.

Bottom Line

Sage Intacct bills itself as the number one choice for organizations outgrowing QuickBooks. It helps CFOs and businesses with multiple entities access integrated management and financial reports across their business entities and delivers automation and controls around billing, accounting, and reporting to reduce errors, stay audit-ready, and scale the business. While QuickBooks Online offers many of the same features, it lacks Sage Intacct’s advanced capabilities such as fund accounting and collaboration tools.